There will probably be fewer Sandy-like storms in the future

Warning: This is a long post. And it is about science. It is devoid of both climate advocacy and denialism.

Bloomberg.

It only took a hurricane striking new New York City, but climate change is finally an issue in the presidential campaign. On Thursday, New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg cited climate change as a primary reason why he endorsed President Obama.

To his credit, in his endorsement, Bloomberg did not link Sandy directly to climate change, writing:

Our climate is changing. And while the increase in extreme weather we have experienced in New York City and around the world may or may not be the result of it, the risk that it may be — given the devastation it is wreaking — should be enough to compel all elected leaders to take immediate action.

However, others in the political-climate sphere have been far less interested in accuracy. Writing for one of Bloomberg’s publications, under the headline, It’s Global Warming, Stupid, Paul Barrett states:

Yes, yes, it’s unsophisticated to blame any given storm on climate change. Men and women in white lab coats tell us—and they’re right—that many factors contribute to each severe weather episode. Climate deniers exploit scientific complexity to avoid any discussion at all.

Clarity, however, is not beyond reach. Hurricane Sandy demands it: At least 40 U.S. deaths. Economic losses expected to climb as high as $50 billion. Eight million homes without power. Hundreds of thousands of people evacuated. More than 15,000 flights grounded. Factories, stores, and hospitals shut. Lower Manhattan dark, silent, and underwater.

And even that kind of rhetoric is timid compared to what some people have been saying about Sandy and climate change. “Global warming systematically caused Sandy,” wrote George Lakeoff at the Huffington Post. And Kevin Knobloch, an Obama campaign surrogate and President of the Union of Concerned Scientists, said the following of Sandy:

“We’re at a place where we have to focus on both mitigation — reducing greenhouse gas emissions — and adaptation — starting to move our vital infrastructure out of harm’s way. We know this is going to be our future. This is our new normal.”

Sandy has injected climate change, which for months has completely been a non-issue with the Presidential candidates, into the campaign.

My concern is whether the end justifies the means. My concern is setting expectations that Sandy, that large, destructive hurricanes striking the United States, is the “new normal.” My concern is that we’re telling people that we’ve entered an era in which super-storms are the new normal and that there will be a mega-disaster every year.

My concern is that we’re not debating facts when it comes to hurricanes and climate science.

IT’S SCIENCE, STUPID

Science tells us this is not a new normal.

Science tells us climate change has not had a discernible impact on global hurricane activity. A warmer climate, of course, is changing hurricanes. But, scientists consistently tell us, that change is so small it cannot be measured at the present and likely won’t be measurable until the middle of this century.

But what about Sandy?

Earlier this week Andy Revkin compiled some opinions of actual hurricane and extreme weather scientists on Sandy. Kevin Trenberth, who in interviews with me has spoken nearly as ardently about the perils of climate change as has James Hansen, said of the idea that a warmer Arctic contributed to Sandy’s intensification (see Francis et. al.), “With respect to the Arctic connection, I don’t believe it.” And later, he said:

It is true that hurricanes normally recurve and head east, especially at this time of year. So we do have a negative NAO and some blocking anticyclone in place, but the null hypothesis has to be that this is just “weather” and natural variability.

Of course Sandy’s effects were exacerbated by rising sea levels. According to NOAA data, the sea level in Manhattan has risen by about half a foot during the last century. Some, but not all, of that rise is attributable to human greenhouse gases. So the surge was a few inches worse because of climate change.

But that’s as far as the science goes. And my purpose here is to follow the science, not an agenda to change U.S. carbon emissions policy nor deny science or climate change.

So where does the science take us in regard to hurricanes and climate?

WHAT SCIENCE TELLS US

I have already posted about an influential paper in Nature Geoscience, published in 2010, that surveyed all of the recent climate science and hurricane literature. In summary, after studying past and present hurricane data the scientists did not conclusively find any detectable human influence on hurricane activity.

Since that paper there has been more research done. One important paper was published in Science — that would be America’s most influential science journal — which modeled a warming climate’s impact on the frequency of intense Atlantic hurricanes (see abstract).

This is state-of-the-art science using the best-resolution climate models. If you’re a proponent of anthropogenic global warming then, by definition, you pretty much have to have some measure of faith in these models. The following projection, using the “business as usual” A1B climate scenario, predicts the change in hurricane frequency by wind speed between the current climate and what’s expected between 2081 and 2100.

Although our internal variability estimate is very uncertain, these results suggest that one would not expect to detect an A1B-like anthropogenic influence on Atlantic basin category 4 and 5 frequency at the present time.

In other words, in the future there might be an increase in the very strongest storms at the end of the century, and that is something we should definitely be concerned about, but there is not now such an increase. Indeed, if we look at Sandy-like storms, which had maximum sustained winds of 110 mph (50 m/s), we would expect to see about a 35 percent reduction in storms reaching that level of intensity in the future.

How is this possible, given that warmer waters fuel more and stronger hurricanes in our experience? The reason is that the warming in the lower and upper levels appears to be such that atmospheric stability remains about the same. Put another way, a sea temperatures rise, so does the temperature needed for convection — thunderstorm activity — rise in the tropics.

A recent study in Nature (see abstract) found a correlation between a rise in sea surface temperature and this temperature threshold for tropical convection during the last 30 years:

Thus there are theoretical reasons to believe hurricane activity is not increasing at the present, and there are good real-world data reasons to believe this.

Finally there’s another,still more recent study in Geophysical Research Letters (see abstract) that used the Japanese Meteorological Research Institute‘s global model to simulate hurricane activity over a period of 228 years, from 1872 to 2099.

In contrast to talk about climate change spawning more hurricanes — that more hurricane strikes will be the “new normal” — the actual global count of tropical storms and hurricanes decreased in their study from an average of 83 during the last 30 years of the 19th century to 59.6 during the last 30 years of the 21st century.

We can conclude, then, that science tells us three things about climate and hurricanes:

There is no discernible effect on present activity by climate change

There will probably be fewer hurricanes in a warmer world

The very strongest storms may get a bit stronger in a warmer world

SUMMARY

My point is far from casting doubt on climate change and humanity’s role in increasing greenhouse gases. My point is that while there are a lot of very good reasons to be concerned about climate change, notably heat, drought and rising sea levels, an increase in “super” storm activity at present is not yet detectable, and science tells us it won’t be until the middle of the century at least.

Yes, sea level rise will make the effects of hurricanes worse. But telling people that Sandy was caused by climate change, or that Sandy is the “new normal” as a result of global warming, or that Sandy is “global warming, stupid,” is, well, stupid. The science does not support any of these positions. Science, in fact, indicates there will be considerably fewer Sandy-like storms in a warmer world. If saying this makes me a “scold” in the words of David Roberts, so be it.

False promises to the contrary will not help climate advocates make their case, it will only undermine their message when there’s a lull in major hurricanes hitting the United States.

It is true that Sandy was a human-caused disaster. We build cities on the coast. We don’t adequately protect them. We don’t heed evacuation warnings. That is where the blame lies for this one, not climate change.

81 Responses

Warning: This is a long post. And it is about science. It is devoid of both climate advocacy and denialism.

Warning: There will be many who read no further than your headline and then jump off into an impassioned rant about climate change. Unlike your post, those rants will be full of both climate advocacy and denialism and devoid of science.

Then answer my question on my response. I know that Eric is a “scientist” and if anybody should question his religion on global warming they are automatically called a “whack job wingnut” but it seems to me just one of you genius level “scientist” types should be able to explain that lack of increase in our level of global CO2. Waiting

JohnD, C02 is a pretty weak greenhouse gas. It is not the greatest contributor to “forcing” climate. Even your link does not support that statement. It cites many other factors as well. Methane, N20, CFC’s… and of course water vapor.

It does if you actually read for comprehension. Here, I’ll link directly to the graph. See that red line? That’s the forcing from CO2, which is at least four times that of the solar variability and over a much longer time scale than the volcanic (centuries vs. years).

During Sandy, Fox had more discussion on Bengazi than Sandy, since they’ve latched onto that story as the only foreign policy event that remotely shows anything but positive marks for our president. You know, since Fox’s objective is to get GOP elected, not be a news service.

Thank you Eric. Lots of stupidity involved in H Sandy. What was the HMS Bounty doing travelling offshore with all the warnings? Why are people begging for food and water?
Like Katrina, this storm hit a huge slum area. These folks live with their hands out to govt. They are prepared for nothing. For those who prepared and lost, I am truly sorry….been there twice Celia 69 and Hugo 89.
110 mph wind and rain on the Texas coast are welcome events for our usual drought conditions in Aug, Sept.Oct.

“models” are great for supporting an opinion.
who creates the “models”. those that want you to believe their opinion.

just read an article released with no comment from the climate world.
a non political group with 3,000 monitoring stations around the world found the temperature of the earth has remained the same since 1986. from 1900-1946 the earth’s temp was the same to slightly cooler. from 46-86 the earth warmed up .5 degrees.
500 years ago if sandy hit the same area, the beaches would have been replenished and cleaned, old trees would have been knocked down, mother natures way of keeping house.
the same way with our drought last year. mother nature got rid of 5 million trees that we plantd, but she couldn’t feed.

Sandy was not unprecedented. The Hurricane of 1938 hit just north of where Sandy hit and was a stronger storm with peak wind gusts of 160 mph and a surge estimated between 16-25 ft. 600 people in New England lost their lives.

Most of the problems nowadays come from property loss. Exponentially more people are living on the beaches in bigger and more expensive homes.

Simply compare the west end of Galveston Island nowadays to what it was 40 years ago when I was a kid. A few small, one or two bedroom beach cottages have gave way to entire communities of multi-million dollar vacation rental homes. Personally I do not think it is wise to subsidize these huge homes built in harms way with federal flood insurance.

“It is true that Sandy was a human-caused disaster. We build cities on the coast. We don’t adequately protect them. We don’t heed evacuation warnings. That is where the blame lies for this one, not climate change.”

That’s why we listen to engineers, not faux liberal scientists fear mongering over CO2 BS. We have wasted way too much money on nothing when we should be better of spending money elsewhere like improving building codes against tornados, hurricanes, etc. Oh yeah, we haven’t really done much to prepare for Carrington-like events… If that happens, that will be the worst thing ever happened…

Greenhouse Gas. Is that defined as CO2? What is the content of CO2 in our air? If you do not know then do not try to tell me that is the cause of global warming. You can google it and find out yourself. I will help you though. It is LESS than one tenth of one percent. It is .0351 percent. If you could buy ALL of the air in our atmosphere for $100 the value of all of the CO2 would be less than a dime. It is so small it hardly exists at all. It has NOT changed in over 150 years. If you are an advocate of global warming explain that to me and the rest of the thinking people. Is the sky really falling??

There is bad science, and then we have Quit Whining with no science. Go to the Wikipedia page for Carbon Dioxide in Earth’s Atmosphere (I even linked it for you). The CO2 content in the atmosphere has increased. Yes, it is still between 3 and 4 parts per million, but it still has a significant impact in the atmosphere’s ability to accept and reject heat. And for reference, the global concentration of natural gas in the atmosphere is almost unmeasurable, but it has 40 times the effect as a greenhouse gas that CO2 has.

Economic losses expected to climb as high as $50 billion. Eight million homes without power. Hundreds of thousands of people evacuated. More than 15,000 flights grounded. Factories, stores, and hospitals shut. Lower Manhattan dark, silent, and underwater. Where is Obama? He’s flying over Snookie’s mansion in New Jersey and then on to lunch later.

The only people who don’t believe in climate change are those that know nothing about it.

The reason the republicans are in denial concerning climate change is because it is an environmental regulation concern. They are against environmental regulation because it results in an expense to businesses that pollute. Without environmental regulation, corporations effectively receive a tax cut in that they pay nothing for their pollution, and eventually the government, and thus the American people pick up the tab for the cleanup. So, public money has effectively been transfered to private hands.

Actually, the key argument is about whether the climate change is so apocalyptic that we have to restructure our way of life entirely.

There are projections that claim that, should we maintain the usual power plant refresh cycle, we won’t be arguing over this in 30 years — simply because the worst carbon producers will have been replaced under a normal plant life-cycle.

The science might be interesting, but the fear-mongering is overblown.

“Don’t think QW knows what the word “pollutant” means. Maybe he should go fill his house with CO2 and spend the night there. Then he can tell us about it in the morning.”

Dude, do you live in a house? If you do, you may be suprised.

Since the U.S. is coming into the winter season, most of your doors and windows most likely will be closed. In that case, your own home WILL have anywhere between 800-2000ppm CO2 present, depending on the number of occupants.

Tell us about it in the morning……when you wake up….all nice and fresh after a pleasant nights sleep.

Excellent Eric!!! This is by far your best blog post and is also one of the best journalistic treatments of any subject I have seen in my lifetime! Journalism at its’ best, your profs at that university (what’s it called??), would be proud of you. I am also sick of this new Hollywood-NYC-DC phrase “new normal”. It has to be the stupidest and most ridiculous phrase ever invented. It is obviously all about total denial of change and that things and the world always change, always have and always will, and not always the way you like things to change. I know they mean the old normal was stuff we liked and agreed with. So what else is new people? The next time I hear it I’m going to punch or throw something at the fool who uses it.

If you read “Black Swan” by Nassim Taleb you will understand that the Bell Curve does not apply to everything and that theory cannot cover all aspects. Nassim call theorising “platonism” or “platonic” science. Black Swans inevitably occur and when they do, things will change our outlook. The ancient good will become uncouth so to speak. We may well in fact be under a long tail of extreme weather occurances for what ever reason, climate change or just statistics. Yes, a hundred year event can happen several times with in a short time span. But if YOU live in lower Manhattan or have the worlds largest financial system or a huge hospital located there, are YOU willing to bet on the Bell Curve? I urge everybody to read “Black Swan The Impact of the Highly Improbable” by Nassim Taleb. I keep the book permanently with me in my brief case at all times in case I need to remind myself about my health, investments or whutever I want to prognosticate about. Seriously.

With so little evidence condemning human factored causation to global warming and severe storm activity, it makes no sense to throw our fragile global economy into a tailspin trying to control antropogenic causes. Hopefully the scientific world has learned some lessons concerning censorship of scientific data which counter the prevailing theories of the powers that be. The allowance of full discussions of controversy should be a sine qua non in the scientific world. Personally, as a scientifically educated person, I have lost a lot of faith in scientists who chase the grant money and advocate in favor of the perceived result desired by the grant givers. I favor continued study of climate change etiology, but am skeptical of those who seemingly can’t resist the mob effect of popular (among the scientific hierarchy) hyperbolic opinions. Scientists, treat thyself, as you have made quite mess of things in the public’s eye. It will take some doing to make a course correction, to say nothing of changing the public’s opinion.

This is a great post, Eric. You’ve presented an informed opinion about the hurricane and the extent to which climate conditions had any effect, and you’ve presented the information in a reasonable manner. Thank you for taking the time to put this together.

In climate science, as in politics these days, there seems to be no room for a compromise position. Either every adverse climate event is caused by climate change and the world is going to end tomorrow if we don’t do something, or it is all junk science dreamed up by a bunch of people trying to make a buck or a name for themselves.

When you build large cities in the vicinity of water, either oceans or rivers, eventually you will get bit. When you build on barrier islands (on the Gulf coast or the Atlantic coast) you are just asking for trouble.

The fact is that most of the worlds commerce moves on the water. Cities grow near the commerce hubs. Cities need to be smart in how they build and have a plan for when the worst case happens.

There is a hypothesis out there–some call it a myth—
that states: Trailer Parks cause tornadoes.
It basically can be interpreted
to mean a vortex in the form of a tornado does
more damage in a trailer park than in other areas.

To which I will add a corollary:
I propose to call it Berger’s Third Law of Vortex Impingement:
A vortex in the form of a hurricane does
more damage in a city than in other areas.
The common interpretation:
Big Cities cause hurricanes.

So warmer ocean waters and higher sea levels from man-caused global warming did contribute to the storm surge that caused most of the death & devastation by Sandy? Could you clear that up for your readers, por favor?

“Arriving atop fantastically warm water and aided by a full foot of sea-level rise during the last century, Hurricane Sandy is just the latest example of climate change’s impact on human society. Unless we rapidly phase out our use of fossil fuels, most Americans within shouting distance of an ocean will—in coming years—live behind the sort of massive levees and floodgates that mark Louisiana today.”

The New York Academy Sciences has already begun examining the viability of three massive floodgates near the mouth of New York Harbor, not unlike the Thames River floodgate that protects London today. Another floodgate has been proposed for the Potomac River just south of Washington, fending against tsunami-like surge tides from future mega storms. Plus there will be levees—everywhere. Imagine the National Mall, Reagan National Airport and the Virginia suburbs—all well below sea level—at the mercy of “trust-us-they’ll-hold” levees maintained by the Army Corps of Engineers.

“Of course Sandy’s effects were exacerbated by rising sea levels. According to NOAA data, the sea level in Manhattan has risen by about half a foot during the last century. Some, but not all, of that rise is attributable to human greenhouse gases. So the surge was a few inches worse because of climate change.

But that’s as far as the science goes. And my purpose here is to follow the science, not an agenda to change U.S. carbon emissions policy nor deny science or climate change.”

“…A warmer climate, of course, is changing hurricanes. But, scientists consistently tell us, that change is so small it cannot be measured at the present and likely won’t be measurable until the middle of this century.”

I did actually assume that Sandy-like storms were more probable in a warming climate. I stand corrected, and I thank you for correcting my mis-information.
Go Science! (I hope in future you will not feel the need to disclaim to your viewers that there is science in the SciGuy blog)

Eric, from the abstract of the Science paper you reference:

“The model projects nearly a doubling of the frequency of category 4 and 5 storms by the end of the 21st century, despite a decrease in the overall frequency of tropical cyclones, when the downscaling is based on the ensemble mean of 18 global climate-change projections. The largest increase is projected to occur in the Western Atlantic, north of 20°N.”

You say that the storms will get “a bit stronger in a warmer world” is this world you referring to the near term, or at the end of the century?

“Instead, it is important to recognize that we have a “new normal,” whereby the environment in which all storms form is simply different than it was just a few decades ago. Global climate change has contributed to the higher sea surface and sub-surface ocean temperatures, a warmer and moister atmosphere above the ocean, higher water levels around the globe, and perhaps more precipitation in storms.” –Kevin Trenberth

I fear that the hysteria surrounding “global warming” / “global climate change” will have the opposite long term effect than what the pro warming faction is looking for. A modern “cry wolf” story. I have studied what both sides say about climate change. I cannot deny that some of the facts given by the pro folks are correct. But I am in no way YET convinced warming is man made. There is a lot of evidence pointing the other way. I’ve got a lot of time on my hands, being retired. So I can get into “stuff” more than many folks can. The sad part of this is that both sides call each other idiots & their respective followers believe that the other side are all idiots. Human caused global warming may or may not be a fact. But what is a fact is that people are getting nastier by the minute. No such thing as a disagreement anymore. The other side are always “morons”.

Good post, Eric. I’m not going to risk reading any of the other comments, because, despite all of your efforts to the contrary, I know that the comments are going to degenerate into a climate-related political dogfight. But you deserve credit for clearly explaining and showing exactly what is actually happening.

I wonder if that person who called you “an Al Gore liberal” is still around. If he is, this post makes him honor-bound to admit that he was wrong.

My concern is that our means of measurement and methods of interpretation have changed over the years. Rather than a few “official” weather stations, we seem to have one on every block. Our measurements are probably reflective of local conditions such as heat islands, exhaust air from heat exchangers, and localized pollution – and we have the instrumentation today that will respond to it. We also have sea buoy and satellite technology that was undreamed of in the last century, and when we lump all of these data into a single “climate” regime, the resulting “change” is probably meaningless. We now have a better picture of earth’s weather than ever before, is it any wonder we are detecting small anomalies we’d passed over before?

I find the saddest, most appalling thing going on around Sandy and all the media and politically generated “attention”, is that it is all so misdirected and promises to make all this pain and suffering continue when this all happens again. Instead of talking about where building should be allowed, where effective barriers and remedies should be erected and established, they are all trying to find someone to blame and frantically grasping at straws for “explanations” of things rather than fixes and improvements for the glaring problems and mistakes over the last century in that area. I saw this happen for decades on the Gulf Coast too, but after some tropical storms like Allison and Frances, the people finally woke up and started doing some things to improve the defenses and building practices around SE Texas. I really wonder if the politicians on the East Coast are really smart enough to figure this out.

Blame somebody else has become the default position ever since Katrina. In my many years in Corpus Christi, through a number of bad storms, everybody came together to help each other. Now, everybody not only wants the government to “fix” everything, but to prevent it from happening. I am afraid that we are forever changed. No longer can we count on our OWN selves, we can’t count on our neighbors. MONEY, MONEY, MONEY. That’s all that matters anymore. Linemen from Alabama were turned away because they weren’t union. WHAT? MONEY, MONEY, MONEY.

The climate charlatans don’t use science in their arguments, it’s more propaganda. And the “science” they do quote is skewed. Most of the warmist’s “evidence” comes from computer modelling, that is, garbage in, garbage out.

They show a link between warm temperatures and large storms and an increase in storm surges over the past century. This has been an exceptionally warm year in the Atlantic, couldn’t that have strengthened the storm. And aren’t warm water conditions like this years linked to global warming.

First, on CO2. There are ~392 parts of CO2 in the atmosphere per million parts (ppm). That is up from 250 ppm before the Industrial Revolution. It is the largest climate forcing gas of those playing a part in global warming. Others include methane, ozone, nitrous oxide, and chloroflourocarbons. A previous commentor explained water vapor’s role well enough. If you want a good explanation for scientifically literate lay people, read or watch Richard Alley’s Earth: The Operator’s Manual.

Second, there’s no question that as we increase AGW, it’s easy for very alarmed people (me among them) to ring an alarm when it might not be advised. But I’m still not completely convinced that your argument warrants us being much less alarmed about hurricanes and climate change. One of your concluding points is, “There is no discernible effect on present activity by climate change.” Hmm.

A recent PNAS paper by Grinsted, Moore, and Grivjejeva (cited in a comment above), states, “The largest cyclones are most affected by warmer conditions and we detect a statistically significant trend in the frequency of large surge events (roughly corresponding to tropical storm size) since 1923. In particular, we estimate that Katrina-magnitude events have been twice as frequent in warm years compared with cold years (P < 0.02)." (read the abstract here: http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/10/10/1209542109) As the commentor above notes, 2012 has been an especially warm year. That exceptional warmth is caused by humans burning fossil fuels. Simply put, it stands to infer from Grinsted et al's findings that that an event like Sandy was more likely and will be more likely in a world warmed by humans. Is that "a bit?"

This term, "a bit," is a bit unscientific. As another reader noted, the Science paper’s “model projects nearly a doubling of the frequency of category 4 and 5 storms by the end of the 21st century, despite a decrease in the overall frequency of tropical cyclones, when the downscaling is based on the ensemble mean of 18 global climate-change projections. The largest increase is projected to occur in the Western Atlantic, north of 20°N.” Should we readers take these projected changes as “a bit?”

So maybe Sandy isn’t quite the alarm bell some might be inclined to believe it is. Sandy could be part of the slowly building trend toward such an increased frequency of 4 & 5 storms. It can be neither confirmed nor refuted today, but the Grinsted et al paper provides reasons for that inference. We won’t know that for decades to come but the prediction is there and it warrants caution. Part of exercising that caution is through policy to ameliorate climate change and mitigate its effects.

It seems obvious that the sea-level rise and the size of the storm are related to the energy humans are adding to the system by burning fuel and releasing millions of tons of greenhouse (heat-trapping) gases into the atmosphere. That’s highschool science and as obvious as plate tectonics. Remember when that was a controversy? Or that seat belts in cars, or helmets for bikes save lives? Asking if climate change has something to do with Sandy is like asking if smoking has something to do with lung cancer. Remember when people could say with a straight face that it didn’t?

What is really being ignored in this storm – and Irene as well – is the real source of the massive power outages that are so disruptive, which is all the trees that are falling on the line. Trees didn’t used to fall with regularity on power lines – or people, cars and houses. The winds in both those storms were not extraordinary, nothing that a healthy tree shouldn’t be able to withstand. Why are they falling now?

The answer is pretty obvious if you trouble to actually LOOK at them. They are all dying. Every species, every age, every location. They have obvious symptoms – broken branches, cankers, splitting bark, holes, thin crowns, early leaf drop, lack of autumn color, yellowing needles, bark covered with lichens and fungus. You can’t find a healthy tree anymore.

So the question becomes, why are they dying? Most foresters and scientists will say, climate change and/or invasive pests. But those explanations don’t fit the empirical evidence which is that even native pests and diseases have run amock, and even young trees grown and watered and fertilized in nurseries are exhibit the identical symptoms of decline. Even annual, tropical ornamentals in enriched soil in pots that like heat, and aquatic plants in ponds have injured foliage and stunted growth. So what do all of these plants have in common?

The answer is, the composition of the atmosphere. Most people don’t realize it, because it’s invisible, the the background level of tropospheric ozone is inexorably increasing. Precursors from Asia travel across oceans and continents and the persistent concentration has reached a threshold that is intolerable to the plants that absorb it when they photosynthesize. Agricultural yield and quality are reduced, and especially trees that are exposed to cumulative damage season after season are universally – around the world – in decline.

This process has been well known to foresters and agronomists for decades, and demonstrated in field observation and controlled fumigation experiments. They just don’t want to publicize it, or even admit it, because the source is the emissions from industrial civilization itself. They would rather point to drought, insects, fungus and disease EVEN THOUGH it is well known that ozone debilitates plants causing their root systems to shrink as they allocate more energy to repairing damaged foliage, rendering them more vulnerable to drought and wind…AND impinges on their natural immunity to attacks from insects, disease and fungus, which exist precisely to break down dying trees, not destroy healthy trees.

It’s interesting that the so-called ‘skewed science’ pretty much nailed the results of Sandy – in a paper from February of this year. See Lin et al 2012:… the combined effect of storm climatology change and SLR will greatly shorten the surge flooding return periods. … by the end of the century, the present NYC 100-yr surge flooding may occur every 20 yr or less …

This does not say that garden variety storms will occur more frequently; rather, it says that the worst cases will occur more frequently. That is consistent with other studies documenting an increasing frequency of extreme weather events. On the Gulf Coast, we know how to deal with the small storms; it’s the big’uns that hurt. And more frequent big’uns is not good news.

So ignore and mock the evidence if you want to, but first look at Fig 1a in the referenced paper: A ‘worst case’ 4 m storm surge at NYC’s Battery Park. And remember, the next big one that takes your beach house might not be so far off.

Eric, how many main stream papers picked up your view? Neither side of the political aisle cares about the truth when it comes to science, but an infinitesimal number of us who do appreciate your effort to identify the truth.

The actual story of the data in the article is that warming reduces hurricanes and their potential to cause damage. As it flattens the energy gradient from tropics to poles, this actually makes a lot of sense.

BTW, there’s a typo: “the last 30 years of the 21st century.” Those decades haven’t happened yet!!

Sandy was running into considerable extratropical forces
for almost 2 days before landfall – explaining growing to
large size, making the left turn to New Jersey, having
hurricane-qualifying winds restricted to unusual (and
always-offshore) locations within this storm, and being as
strong a storm as it was at landfall from waters too cold to
support a hurricane (even if 5 degrees warmer than “normal”).

When Sandy made landfall, much to probably most of what
powered that storm was horizontal temperature gradient.
This has been decreasing due to the Arctic warming more than
the tropics. Ever notice that bad Nor’Easters tend to occur
from October to April?
Warmer water and vertical temperature gradient assists them,
but horizontal temperature gradient is primary, and decreasing
in the northern hemisphere due to global warming.

I would say most climate scientist would not link cyclone strength to global warming. But the destruction caused by hurricane Sandy probably has a strong global warming component. It is well documented that glaciers are receding fast. The melting of land ice contributes to sea level rise. With ocean levels increasing it doesn’t take a very strong storm to cause flooding from storm surge. Sandy was only a category 1 storm when it hit land. The most destructive storms have been taking place in the last 15 to 20 years and most of them are cat 3 or less. If we keep allowing building on barrier islands like those that exist from NY to South Carolina, we will continue to have this kind of devastation.

To see the obvious evidence of the destruction of sea level rise one only has to look at the number of island nations in the Pacific Ocean that are being swallowed by the sea.

Such large slow moving storms with a large north/south latitudinal extent are a feature of a cooling climate system because the additional cloudiness that they involve reduces the amount of solar energy able to enter the oceans.

It happened previously to a slight degree during the mid 20th century cooling period and more pronouncedly during the Little Ice Age.

The cause is an expansion of the polar air masses (negative AO and AAO) as a result of changing solar effects on ozone amounts in the stratosphere which alters the ‘normal’ gradient of the tropopause between equator and pole allowing the permanent climate zones to slide latitudinally equatorward causing global cloudiness changes.

I have explained this in more detail elsewhere.

The fact really does seem to be that a quiet sun naturally warms the stratosphere differentially towards the poles pushing polar air masses equatorward more often.

In contrast an active sun naturally cools the stratosphere differentially towards the poles which contracts the polar air masses reducing equatorward outbreaks.

In this case the expanded polar air masses to the north prevented Sandy from joining the west / east zonal flow and forced it westward into the north east USA instead.

As it happens was aboard the Queen Mary 2 last week as Sandy approached NYC and we only just got out in time.

The previous 5 days of the voyage up to Halifax Nova Scotia was characterised by cloudless blue skies under a high pressure cell. It was clear to me even before the event that the high pressure cell would not easily give way.

If the sun stays quiet then we will see more of such large slow moving storms and the climate system will slowly lose energy.

The contribition of human CO2 being present but too small to measure as against the natural solar and oceanic processes.

Mayor Bloomberg, as least viewed from afar, seemed to be a competent businessman running a complicated city.

Now that city is full of justifiably very angry folks. A very rich city did nothing to protect its tunnels, let alone its seaside communities.

New Amsterdam turned out to be about a century behind Old Amsterdam.

And now every kid could point that out. Let alone political opponents.

A few centuries ago there was one clear option. Assemble a panel of world renowned science experts who would find, consensually, the thousand fellows who caused the storm, mostly by witchcraft and depravity.

And burn the perpetrators at the stake, in very public places.

******

Alas, mayors these days have fewer, not more, means at their disposal. But politics remains of course the same.

So, what better way out than to blame it on people’s depraved behavior, as climate change.

On the cover of the Bloomberg press. Which as an information based outlet, should at least know how to count the time interval between similar storms (from 1893 to 1938 is shorter than 1938-now).

******

See, had people used fewer cars, the subways wouldn’t be flooded now, the story goes.

Will this fly in a city which has the smallest number of cars in the US per person?

People under stress need something to blame, and something was offered to them.

But then, people under stress are volatile. That’s what Shakespeare plays are made of.

Have an open mind and consider the science. That’s fine. However, the thermodynamics of the idea that CO2 can warm the Earth’s surface and thus the climate is totally impossible.

The upper troposphere is -15 deg C and the surface is about 17 deg C. Radiation form the cold matter CANNOT warm the warm matter as those energy levels are already full and the radiation would be rejected. The idea that CO2 can trap energy is also bogus. Even greenhouses do not trap heat—nothing can—they only prevent convection and the mass transport of heat to altitude.

It is patently impossible for the upper tropospheric CO2 to warm the surface in any way. In fact, the presence of an atmosphere at all and the water cycle involving water vapor both serve to offer the surface more ways to transfer heat energy to altitude and off the planet. Furthermore, there is simply not enough energy in the upper troposphere to heat the surface even is CO2 was doing what they claim. The energy content of their claims would mean the atmosphere would have to be at 1000s of deg C.

Climate change is not subject to human activities, except locally by the urban heat island effect. Thus, the goal should be to adapt, which is what we do best.

So, why all of the noise? We are subject to a political agenda based on junk science and orchestrated by the UN’s Agenda 21. There is a reason the IPCC, the global warming propaganda machine, is part of the UN. It’s mission is to show the effects of global warming regardless of whether it is happening or not. If it did not report so, it would fail its mission and its reason for being.

The greenies say “surrender to nature. Sacrifice human beings to Mother Earth. She is hungry; she must be fed human flesh! If you don’t, she will punish us with monster storms!”

The monetarists say “surrender to money. Sacrifice human beings to Mammon. He is hungry; he must be fed human flesh! If you don’t, he will punish us with capital flight, bank runs, character assassination, and removal of campaign funds!”

Meanwhile, God “punishes” us for tolerating this idolatry (in reality, we are punishing ourselves with the consequences of our own cowardice), which prevents us from going full throttle with nuclear power, breeder reactors, fusion research, an aggressive manned space program, and giant water management and diversion projects, including storm gates!

Solar variations produced the changes observed from MWP to LIA to date. The assumptions made as regards the proposed minimal power of sun and oceans in shifting the climate zones during the late 20th century are not supported by observations and nor do observations support the assumed amplification of the CO2 effect by a positive water vapour feedback.

Natural effects shifted the climate zones by about 1000 miles latitudinally over 500 year periods. I challenge you to prove the amount of such shifting caused solely by human CO2 after deducting the natural component.

So you claim. But you provide no evidence to back up your statement. In science, it isn’t about what you say, but what you can demonstrate via data. So let’s see the data that you believe backs up your claim.